


aujourd'hui

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, M/M, THERE WILL BE BUTTS, and copious swearing, and fluffy fluff flufferness, definitely modern!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/668688">a demain</a>".</p><p>Grantaire wakes up with limited memory of the night before. He remembers playing "Never Have I Ever" with the other Amis, but the rest is hazy. In true Grantaire fashion, he drags Feuilly and Bahorel out for food (mostly against their will) to remedy their hangovers -- but they hardly have a chance to sit down before the most important moment of all comes rushing back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aujourd'hui

**Author's Note:**

> To read this fic in Chinese, please visit [this link](http://www.mtslash.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=97287).

To have a hangover was to be human, according to Grantaire. In fairness, he was mocking Enjolras at the time, who had somehow miraculously made it to his twenty-second birthday without ever having experienced the ‘rebellious joy’ of drinking. 

Enjolras had not been impressed with his argument, and had proceeded to his twenty-third birthday still without incident. 

Grantaire, on the other hand, made a point of making up for the other man’s sobriety at every opportunity. It was his duty to the universe, he had explained. Getting shit-faced in Enjolras’s name was the one constant of his doubtful, disillusioned life. And as a result of his habit, the Saturday afternoon that followed the party at Combeferre’s apartment left him feeling more human than he had in quite some time. 

He was familiar with the notion that someone in the presence of a person they esteemed suffered the effects of intoxication more thoroughly than someone just hanging out and having a good time. It was the reason Combeferre was able to roll out of bed at 7:30, choke down a glass of water, and get on with his day.

It was the reason Jehan and Courfeyrac refused to get out of bed.

It was the reason that Grantaire rolled over some time after noon and genuinely wished he could saw off his own head. Someone had obviously already taken an axe to the back of his skull -- what was a little more damage? Anything that would sever his spinal cord would have have been perfectly acceptable. 

He stuck his hands into his hair and bit back the urge to ralph all over himself. 

It took him a little while to actually open his eyes. He could sense the sunlight coming in through the window, and didn’t want to deal with it -- but eventually the need to pee won out, as it so often did. He peeked -- squinted, really -- at the ceiling. A familiar crack ran parallel to the wall, which was good. At least he was in his own bed. That wasn’t always the case, and it was nice to know he wasn’t missing a huge chunk of information that could have hypothetically ended with stilettos being lobbed at his head.

He didn’t ever want to go through that again.

Three very awkward mornings in a row was plenty for one lifetime. 

He took a deep breath and looked down at the trunk next to his bed. It contained some of his clothes, but he mostly used it as a night stand. There was a twisted lamp sitting on it whose bulb had blown out a couple of months ago and never been replaced, as well as his phone charger -- even though he usually didn’t remember to plug his phone in.

He hardly remembered getting in bed a lot of the time. Being that responsible was asking too much. 

He certainly didn’t remember pouring himself a glass of water and leaving it there, but he was grateful to himself as he lunged for it and sloppily chugged the whole thing. The front of his shirt was soaked by the time the glass was empty, but his mouth didn’t taste quite so much like a badly mixed drink, and the pain in his head had subsided just enough that he might have actually been able to stand up without dramatically falling over and crying. 

And considering his bladder had taken the lead in the body-parts-that-wanted-him-dead game, the latter was a very good thing. He put the cup down, struggled to disentangle himself -- failed -- and flopped off his mattress on to the floor, where he half-crawled, half-hobbled to the bathroom. 

Only after he had paid reparations to his body for the criminal ways in which he abused it did a cloudy memory of the night before come back to him.

He recalled playing a terrible game. He recalled having an entire bottle of whiskey in his lap. He recalled how very pretty Jehan looked with a purple ribbon in his hair, and wondered if maybe whiskey wasn’t the best choice in alcohol for him those days. 

He washed his face with exceptionally cold water, because absolutely no one would help him if Courfeyrac ever found out about those mental images. Honestly, no one would help him if Jehan found out either, and he wasn’t sure which was more frightening. For two boys who preferred falling asleep in fields of daisies while the sun kissed their cheeks to any kind of aggression, they both had it within them to be rabid little terrors.

Grantaire grabbed his toothpaste. 

If fate had been on his side, he’d have been struck by another memory right then. It would have been a scene right out of a romantic comedy -- a memory in the guise of a lightning bolt would have hit him in the chest. He’d have gone into cardiac arrest, and clutched the sink to keep from falling over as he replayed that moment from the night before when he promised Enjolras that he would kiss him that day. 

He’d have gone as white as the ceramic under his hands as he recalled Enjolras’s failure to hide his smile. 

But Grantaire didn’t remember any of that. He brushed his teeth, somehow managed to shave without cutting himself, and even ran a brush through his permanently unruly hair. Until then, he wasn’t aware that he owned a brush -- much less a black and pink one that probably belonged to Eponine, and not him, but hey, she had left it in his apartment and there were very strict finders-keepers rules about that kind of thing -- but apparently he did. He even dug up a bottle of ibuprofen to take the edge off the so-called ‘humanity’ still burrowing around in his skull. 

Considering it wasn’t even 2PM, he felt surprisingly accomplished. 

Neither Bahorel nor Feuilly picked up when he called. He left them each a long, loving voicemail, littered with pet names (“You fucking wankers,”), and sweet comments (“Get your fucking arses out of bed,”) and then proceeded to text them pictures of each others’ butts. It was ritual whenever he wanted their attention, and he routinely took completely unsubtle pictures of their backsides whenever he could solely for that purpose. 

It took them slightly less than five minutes to get back to him. 

“Fucking get up,” he told Feuilly. “Let’s get breakfast.”

Feuilly grunted, which Grantaire understood meant ‘Fine,’ in Feuilly dialect. 

“Corinthe, fifteen minutes.” 

Feuilly hung up on him, and Grantaire quickly sent him a picture of his own butt as an incentive to hurry up. 

Some length of time that absolutely did not add up to fifteen minutes later, he strolled into the restaurant they sometimes haunted in the hazy aftermath of binge drinking. Bahorel and Feuilly were both there -- and both fast asleep. Bahorel had his head back, his mouth open, and was snoring like a train, and Feuilly -- who disdained any and every comparison that his friends made of his person with a small, red fox -- had curled up with his nose tucked into the crook of his arm. 

Grantaire pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. 

“Morning, boys,” he all but shouted, dragging a chair up to the table. “Sleep well?”

It took a lot of restraint on Bahorel’s part not to punch him in the face. Feuilly buried his face in his arms with a soft whine. “Just because you got laid last night,” Bahorel grumbled, covering his ears with his large hands.

But, he didn’t finish the statement. Grantaire stared at him like he was out of his fucking mind. If he had woken up with a pretty girl in his bed, he certainly wouldn’t have dragged those two idiots out to lunch, no matter how much he liked them. 

“Yeah,” he answered. “Lemme just call--” He blanked. He couldn’t actually remember the name of the last girl he’d slept with. A frown crept across his mouth. 

“Enjolras,” Bahorel finished bluntly. 

Grantaire’s expression hardened. He hadn’t sent nearly enough butts to warrant that kind of snark. “How’s Eponine?” He asked just a shade too sourly. 

Bahorel blinked. He was confused, and he hadn’t been awake long enough for his brain to be able to sort out what was happening. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer -- he didn’t know what to say. 

Feuilly -- far more quick-witted than either of them on any given day -- came to their rescue. He let his head fall to the side and explained. “Enjolras walked you home last night.”

Grantaire stared blankly into space. Bahorel ordered a large pot of coffee for their table. Feuilly groaned and mumbled: “I could kiss you.”

That was when the predicted lightning bolt struck, and the colour drained from his face. 

“Fuck me,” he breathed.

“Not today,” Feuilly muttered. 

Bahorel plopped large cups down in front of both of them. “Joyeux Noël,” he saluted. 

Grantaire stood up abruptly, knocking over his chair. Feuilly hissed into his coffee, but didn’t stop drinking. 

“I have to kiss him. I--” Grantaire stopped, held his hand up and checked his breath. “Holy shit!”

That was enough to get the others’ attention. They looked up, watching him with equally perplexed and concerned expressions. 

Grantaire ran. 

He sprinted out of the restaurant, nearly bowling over the terrified waitress as she brought Bahorel and Feuilly their food. But he didn’t have a chance to stop and apologise. He didn’t have time to breathe. He flew out the door, and onto the street and just kept on running at full tilt until he rounded the corner of the avenue where Enjolras lived. 

If he’d been less athletic, he’d have dropped dead before he got there. He regretted a few of the cigarettes he’d had that month, but luckily, he was still remarkably fit, and made it to Enjolras’s door without ever stopping. 

He collapsed against it with a heavy thud when he arrived -- but that couldn’t be helped. His knees had given out and his lungs wouldn’t inflate. He could only pant heavily as he knocked. 

There was no answer. 

He knocked harder. 

And yet, still nothing. 

“Enjolras?” He called out, digging around in his pocket for his phone. His pocket was empty. All of his pockets were empty. 

His phone was back at Corinthe with Bahorel and Feuilly. 

Grantaire whined pitifully. 

A small, mousy-haired child watched him from a door just down the hall. “What ya doin?” He asked in that sing-song childlike way. 

Grantaire grabbed the door handle and hauled himself up into a sitting position. “Looking for someone,” he wheezed. 

“Who for?”

“A man named Enjolras.”

The child sat down and crossed his legs. “That isn’t no man’s place. A mean ol’ hag lives there.”

Grantaire briefly considered the possibility that the kid might still have been talking about Enjolras. “Is she pretty?” He asked. 

The child shook his head with a horrified expression. Grantaire exhaled and rubbed his face with both hands. 

After a moment, he asked: “Do you know if there’s a … tall, blond man living here? Handsome. Kind of looks he should be on a pedestal in a museum?”

The child thought about it briefly. And then, the Grantaire’s extreme relief, he nodded. 

“Do you know where?”

He pointed at the floor above. 

Grantaire looked up. 

As if on cue, Enjolras’s voice called out from the stairwell. “Grantaire?”

Grantaire froze.

Enjolras came down the steps. 

The mousy-haired boy watched silently. 

Enjolras smiled at him when he noticed. “Hey, little Mathis,” he called out. Mathis beamed at him. Enjolras turned back to Grantaire. “Are you alright? You look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Grantaire answered. 

“Bahorel said you left your phone at Corinthe.”

Grantaire nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“You can’t stand up, can you?”

Grantaire shook his head and broke into a hacking cough. 

Enjolras sighed and pulled out his wallet. He handed a few bills to Mathis and softly asked: “Could you bring my friend a glass of water, please?” Mathis nodded and rushed inside. 

Neither Grantaire nor Enjolras spoke until Mathis came back. Enjolras took the cup -- Mathis’s favourite, apparently, as it had his name on the side, next to a large, yellow duck -- and crouched next to Grantaire, handing it over. 

As Grantaire took it, a second, but remarkably less stunning realisation hit him. “It was you,” he murmured. “The water on my trunk this morning. You left it there.” Enjolras nodded. Grantaire was remarkably careful not to spill any on himself this time around. 

“You wouldn’t drink it last night,” Enjolras answered dryly. “In all honesty, I think you were unconscious before you were in bed.”

Grantaire didn’t doubt that. He didn’t remember anything after the words that had been haunting him since he left Corinthe. He was tempted to lean in right then and there. He glanced at Mathis. 

Mathis was calmly counting all three bill Enjolras had given him over and over again. Each time he got a little more satisfied with his result. 

Grantaire looked up into those clear, blue eyes that watched him with-- what was it, concern? He was grateful that his heart was already pounding from his sprint. It couldn’t betray him.

Enjolras didn’t look away. He never looked away. 

Grantaire put the cup down, reached out with both hands to cradle Enjolras’s face, and kissed him firmly on the mouth. 

“Eewww!” Mathis yelled from the doorway, and fled inside. 

Grantaire held the kiss for as long as he could -- which, admittedly, wasn’t very long when his lungs were already on fire, and his heart was threatening to leap out of his chest, and fucking hell, were his hands clammy? He pulled back. His face was already a little pink from running, but there was a distinct sense of: “Shit, shit, shit. What have I done?” underneath it. 

Enjolras didn’t react at all. His face remained as characteristically impassive as ever. 

“...never have I ever kissed me,” Grantaire said quietly. 

Enjolras blinked. 

And then he smiled, raising his hand with one finger down to signal that he had, in fact, done just that.


End file.
